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Category Archives: Rant

Card Sharks

As you prepare for the holidays, do yourself a favor and watch this cold-water-in-the-face video. “Free checking, huh?”

Literacy in America

Thanks to Dylan Wolf for the pointer to the xkcd site.

If you built it I would come

I’ve already given this idea to the on-duty manager of the grocery store where I shop but she probably filed it under looney ideas gleaned from talkative old men in the checkout line and did little or nothing else with it, so I’m offering it to any of my programmer friends who might want to [...]

Speaking of Technology

I sometimes believe the wheels of technological progress would screech to a halt without the use of acronyms. And facility with acronyms seems to be the shibboleth that divides the technological cognoscenti from those who are lost in space when they walk into Best Buy or Circuit City. Seniors, in particular, find dealing with some [...]

Seasons Greetings

Here’s the text of the first email I sent out today. (Names omitted for the usual reasons.) Dear friend, I’m addressing this message to you because I have, in the past, received a number of Word files from you as attachments to your messages. My purpose in sending it to you is not to single [...]

Television

On May 9, 1961, Newton Minnow, John F Kennedy’s appointee to the Chairmanship of the Federal Communications Commission, delivered his now-famous “Vast Wasteland” speech to the National Association of Broadcasters and described the state of television at that time thusly … When television is good, nothing–not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers–nothing is better. [...]

A warning about BingBox

Tom Simpson has done some investigation about this new online community and says … Keep Your Kids Away From BingBox ยป Keep Your Kids Away From BingBox – Webfeed Central Because I know Tom to be knowledgeable about what is and isn’t safe online, I suggest that you heed his warning. technorati tags:BingBox Blogged with [...]

Naked in the town square

Have you ever experienced the panicked feeling that comes from dreaming that you were naked and exposed in some public place like the town square? I have, and I have heard from others who say they have too. I’m sure many a psychiatrist has been able to pay for a yacht or put braces on [...]

Customizing applications

I have previously blogged about the virtue (as I see it) of being able to customize your applications to your own preferences. This afternoon I see that Daryl has made a plea for such customization of a feature in Flock, the alerts he receives from the Flickr Photo browser. He said: In its current form, [...]

It’s about time for Cardinal

I saw this comment (#7) over on Mike Neel's blog this morning and decided I'd better post something here on my blog before such comments begin appearing in my comment section. So let me try to catch you up on some of the things that have been capturing my attention during the last week or [...]